


a thousand stoppered dreams go pale

by mollivanders



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Hermione invites him to Slughorn’s party, Ron lets his mind wander (something he almost never dares to do). Hermione seems like one of those impossible dreams people pursue in the mad hope they’ll come true, only to fall off the face of the earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thousand stoppered dreams go pale

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: a thousand stoppered dreams go pale**  
>  Fandom: Harry Potter  
> Rating: PG  
> Characters: Ron/Hermione, Harry  
> Author's Note: Word Count - 1,284. Spoilers through _Deathly Hallows_. This is me being a Ron fan gifting a Ron fan  <3\. Six moments in Ron Weasley's head once he realizes it might not be wishful thinking.  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_i._

After Hermione invites him to Slughorn’s party, Ron lets his mind wander (something he almost never dares to do). Hermione seems like one of those impossible dreams people pursue in the mad hope they’ll come true, only to fall off the face of the earth.

( _”Honestly, Ron,”_ he can hear her in his head. _”Even you know the earth's slightly elliptical.”_ )

Well, he’d thought it was round but she’d mentioned it off-hand one day. He stored it away with all the facts he knew she expected people to know, next to the inability to Apparate on the Hogwarts grounds and the twelve uses of dragon blood.

He sits there on his four-poster, his curtains drawn and his blanket pulled up to his chin as he wonders if she really meant what he thought she meant.

(Truth be told, he'd only been so snappish because the Slug Club party was just the chance he’d been waiting around for – to ask her before somebody else did.)

Later, Ron tries to forget this dream and to convince himself it never would have worked out anyway (that she didn’t mean what he thought at all, and she asked McLaggen like he’d suggested anyway). He focuses on this to drive thoughts of Hermione out of his head when he's supposed to be kissing another girl, though it never does seem to work.

 

_ii._

Ron absolutely remembers the hospital wing, even if it’s a little blurry. He remembers who came and who didn’t, and he remembers what he half-said, sends a silent thanks to whoever’s listening that he didn’t say more than that, because he’d want to be awake for her reaction to that.

(To what, exactly, changes every time he plays it out in his head. He tells her she looks nice; he apologizes (this, he knows, is a fantasy); and in one very private instance he locks away, Hermione finds him alone and he manages to lean across his hospital bed and kiss her, curls locked in his hands.)

But the look on her face when Lavender finally explodes at them for coming down the stairs together, the relief in her shoulders still weighed down by too many books, tells him all he needs to know. He really does want to be awake for that.

 

_iii._

Ron’s no stranger to jealousy (of Viktor Krum). He doesn’t know why he cares so much – he never felt this flash of envy and denial around anyone else. If he’d made it to the Slug Club party, he supposes he would have been jealous about McLaggen (but then, if he’d gone, there wouldn’t have been a reason to be).

He catches his moment when Hermione’s passing a drink to Ginny, his sister laughing at something Aunt Muriel said about Fleur. Ron can feel the breath catching in his throat and his stomach’s diving for the Snitch but he manages to ask Hermione in an undertone if she’d like to dance.

Maybe it’s what he said (how he said it) that makes her check to see if Ginny and Aunt Muriel are watching before she puts her drink down and takes his hand, smiling.

He’s not the best dancer on the floor but he manages to keep count in his head while Hermione chatters on about the wedding. Naturally, a reprimand slips through her lips.

“You should have left Ginny and Harry alone, Ron.”

An old, familiar flash rises in his eyes as he spins her in a circle.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, trying not to spoil the mood and noticing how nicely her dress fits around her shoulders.

“We’ll be gone soon and they deserve a goodbye,” Hermione states plainly and Ron forces himself to stare anywhere but down, a tempting distraction.

“The sooner the better,” he says, trying to change the subject. “Harry might jump without us if he can.”

Hermione frowns thoughtfully and turns in another circle.

“It’s not going to be fun and games, Ron,” she says before the song ends and they walk off the dance floor back to Ginny and Aunt Muriel.

He knows that (somewhere, he does). It's just that he's always made it through before.

 

_iv._

Only when the first snow settles over England does Ron seek refuge at Shell Cottage and endures Bill’s reproaches. Fleur says very little, just sets a bowl of bouillabaisse in front of him, unknowingly dousing him with another painful memory.

Instead, he tries to talk about the Snatchers and what’s happening in the countryside. He skips over the part where he stopped looking only because he couldn’t think of any tracks to follow in this weather (and how he plans to leave at his first chance). How he doesn't really know where to look but that he tells himself, every night, it's only a matter of time.

He’s only sorry he doesn’t thank them for not being harsher on him before he leaves.

 

_v._

She looks as beautiful and as frightening as he remembers her. Towering over him, the Hermione from the locket sneers his every worst fear in the longest minute of his life.

And then the locket-Hermione wrapped herself around the phantom-Harry and Ron’s brain swings into action, forcing him to his feet and raising the sword high above his head. From the corner of his eye he spies Harry clambering out of the way. In a second, he lunges forward and crashes the sword down on the locket.

(Around his feet, hundreds of spiders vanish into smoke.)

With the locket destroyed he can’t breathe again and sinks to the ground, covering his face and trying to pull himself together. _Come on, Weasley, man up, it was just a locket._

He takes a quiet, shuddering gasp and wipes his eyes to find Harry waiting for him, silent.

“After you left,” Harry says in a low voice Ron strained to hear, “she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone…”

“I’m sorry,” Ron answers, looking up to see Harry standing by his rucksack. The loneliness, the knowledge of what he had surely lost forever this time, filled him like a cavern and the words stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry I left. I know I was a – a –“

He and Harry make their way back to camp and even though Ron knows it shouldn’t be this easy (won’t be this easy), he can’t help but hope he’s wrong about her.

(He’s not – she’s as mad as a hornet and he deserves it all, even if she is pushing all his buttons all over again – but he still hopes.)

 

_vi._

Hermione’s hair is as soft as he’d wondered and it tickles his neck as she kisses him. This second kiss is secluded in an abandoned corridor after the battle is over (really over this time), rubble strewn around their feet.

Ron can’t process it yet. Every emotion is still as sharp as needles and he can’t take a step without their names and faces running past his eyes. Lupin. Tonks. Little Colin Creevey.

(Fred’s dried blood is smeared on his hands so he grips Hermione’s waist tighter, until she gasps in his mouth.)

“Sorry,” he mutters quickly, pulling back. “Did I hurt you?”

There are tears in her eyes but she shakes her head, hair flying, and he knows it’s not him.

“No, Ron,” she answers before reaching back up to kiss him.

(Ron lets himself wait to deal with the rest. He holds Hermione closer, her mouth slipping against his, and feels a thrill of happiness he’s sure Fred would have teased him endlessly for.)

_Finis_


End file.
